Present-day design systems allow digital content creators to create a vast array of digital content. Once a digital content creator creates an individual item of digital content, or “design asset,” through interaction with a computing device, the creator may wish to apply rules on how the design asset is used by others when the design asset leaves the creator's workspace. For example, the creator may allow end-designers, who utilize the creator's design asset within another instance of content of a computing device, to use a design asset to create a web page or publication. The creator may provide the end-designers with rules on how the design asset can be used in written usage guidelines or communicate the rules verbally in iterative sessions with the end-designers. However, these rules are not attached to the design asset itself, and therefore are easily broken by the end-designers that interact with conventional systems. This also forces the creator to constantly monitor every use of the design asset to determine whether the end-designers, or others, are breaking the rules for the design asset. This is a truly insurmountable task for creators that interact with conventional systems who wish to spend time creating these assets, rather than scouring the Internet and printed publications for illegitimate uses of the design assets after creation.
In addition to the challenges noted above that creators have with implementing rules for their design assets, additional problems exist when creating and updating design assets. For example, when a creator creates a design asset, the creator may also create variations on the design asset to use in different contexts, such as with color, shading, or animations, to name some examples. However, it is difficult for a creator to foresee every context in which a design asset may be used, and therefore these variations often do not satisfy the needs of end-designers that wish to utilize the design asset. Furthermore, variations of the design asset may go unused and waste storage space and the creator's time by creating these unused variations. Finally, if the creator wants to update a design asset, it is a tedious task to update the design asset in each place that the design asset has been used. Consequently, conventional design asset creation systems are wrought with redundancies, shortcomings, and lack of control over a creator's digital content.